


Astraphobia

by sbuggbot



Series: Voltbot Armilly [2]
Category: SteamWorld Quest (Video Game)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Phobias, Voltbot Armilly, fear of storms, headcanons, probably takes place pre-Quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 08:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19971364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbuggbot/pseuds/sbuggbot
Summary: Astraphobia - (n) - an abnormal fear of thunder and lightning.





	Astraphobia

**Author's Note:**

> One of the many Voltbot!Armilly traits I headcanon is that she's afraid of thunderstorms; the electrical activity unnerves her and it's so random in comparison to Storm magic that she's worried she'll get zapped.

Copernica was woken up by the sound of someone knocking her bedroom door open. After overcoming the initial shock and concern that someone had broken into the house, Copernica realized that it was just Armilly and relaxed. Armilly was carrying herself differently though, she usually held her head high but right now she was hunching over and looked tense.

“Coco, can I stay in here tonight?” She asked, glancing out the window nervously. It was raining fairly hard but neither of them were really bothered by that alone.

She was about to open her mouth to ask why when there was a crack outside and the sky lit up for a split second. Of course. Armilly hated thunderstorms. “Sure, just try not to hit me in the face with one of your pauldrons this time.”

Armilly gave a soft “okay” and climbed into the bed to hug Copernica. "Cling onto" might have been a more accurate term, actually. With how boisterous and loud she was most of the time, it was definitely odd to see her trembling in fear and trying to make herself seem as small as possible. Copernica was only desensitized to the sight because she had been close friends with Armilly for so long. And she had always been that way from what she could tell.

Trying to explain to Armilly what thunderstorms were didn't help much--if anything, the awareness of what was happening made her even more afraid.

_ “You see?” Her mother said, calm and reassuring. “Thunder is just from lightning striking…” _

_ Armilly curled up even more into the corner. If she had been capable of producing tears, she would have been right now. “Lightning?” _

_ “Yes, they're bolts of electricity that come down from the sky--” her mom got cut off by Armilly wailing in terror. _

_ “It's gonna get me!!” she cried. Once she was aware of lightning and how it worked, any further attempts to console her proved to be fruitless. “I'm gonna get zapped and I'll be fried!” _

Despite what people said, Armilly didn't ever grow out of her fear. It seemed to worsen as she got older, but Copernica wasn't sure if it actually was getting worse or if it just appeared worse since it was a grown woman trembling in fear instead of a little girl.

A bright flash made Armilly flinch and squeeze Copernia harder. She wasn’t even facing the window, in fact, her face was buried in the pillows and Copernica’s shoulder. The anxiety spikes were always in time with the flashes, not the thunder, even if Armilly couldn’t see them. It was like she could  _ feel _ them…

“We’re safe in here, the lightning won’t get us from inside the house,” Copernica said to her.

“You don’t know that, it could get in through the window!”

“The window’s shut, and I doubt it’ll bother to try zapping us through it. There’s too many other tall things like trees to hit instead.” Copernica had always tried to understand the world by rationalizing things; if she could make sense of how things worked then it didn’t scare her as much. 

Sadly, rationalizing alone doesn’t always work with phobias. Armilly shook hard enough her armor rattled, prompting Copernica to pat her head and continue, “I know it still scares you, though.”

“Mm-hmm.” Armilly nodded against her. From her perspective, it wasn’t a completely irrational fear, though...

There was this one time when Armilly was little, before she had met her parents and when she was still wandering on her own. She was wandering around the woods in an attempt to find somewhere to stay when a storm hit. The trees only provided marginal cover from the storm, and while Armilly didn’t know very much at the time, thunderstorms had always given her a bad feeling.

It wasn’t very long before the rain soaked her clothes through and even started getting in her vents some. That alone wasn’t too bad, she’d deal with it, but there was a reason she’d never forget that night in particular.

Armilly had hunkered down under one tree when suddenly she could feel the static in the air. A second later a blinding light engulfed another tree nearby, a large one. The boom made her auditors cut out on her for several seconds.

Heart pounding and breathing hard, Armilly didn’t realize she had jumped to her feet and pressed her back against the tree she was under. All that was left of the other tree now was a smoldering husk. It had happened so fast…it was over by the time Armilly had begun to process what had just happened.

It was a freak incident in the grand scheme of things but it stuck with her. That moment had completely validated and rationalized her innate distrust of thunderstorms into a phobia and there was no undoing it. 

But there was still clinging onto your friend for comfort and waiting the storm out, and that was what Armilly could do now. She'd be lying if she said that it didn't help or that she didn't like it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on my Tumblr: [sbuggbot.tumblr.com](sbuggbot.tumblr.com)


End file.
